Re: Pronunciation guides for non-linguists

Hi!

Andreas Johansson <andjo@...> writes:
> Quoting Henrik Theiling <theiling@...>:
> >...
> > Same for German: [A] is not used is many dialects.  It is tradition to
> > write [A:] vs. [a],
>
> It is? My textbooks have without exception written [a:] vs [a], and includes one
> written by Germans for Germans.
I think it is.  But I admit that I've never actually seen [a_"]
written for German /a/, but only [a], just as you describe.  Probably
this is to not confuse readers since [a_"] looks like [ä] in IPA,
which looks like {ä} and this is [E], which would be misleading.

But comparing /a/ vs. /A/ in langs or dialects that distinguish,
e.g. Dutch or Swiss German or Hamburgian, their /a/ is consistently
more fronted and their /A/ is consintently more backed.  So when being
very precise, I'd annotate [a_"] for Standard Modern German.

Hmm, one would not write [a_"] in the standard five vowel system /a e
i o u/ either, would one?  The default seems to be to just write [a],
although if there's only one open vowel, I'd strongly expect it to be
central.  This is in the same way I'd expect the /e/ and /o/ to be
real mid vowels in such a three-heights system, while in a
four-heights system like German, I'd expect them to be really mid-open
vs. mid-close.  Still you typically write [e] vs. [o] (e.g. Italian or
Spanish).  The precise values will of course depend on language,
dialect and speaker.

Anyway, I think one gets in trouble when starting to talk about [e]
vs. [E] vs. [&] vs. [a] vs. [a_"] vs. [A].  I doubt these are so
well-defined that no overlap occurs for at least one pair of these for
different speakers (of different languages).  I think for me, [a]
vs. [&] is the most difficult to distinguish (but not [a_"] vs. [&]).

> > but most dialects I a aware of have a centralised
> > [a_"] (+- length) for both.  Anyway, there's [A:] vs. [a] in northern
> > dialect, and probably others.  So it'd not be clear what you mean from
> > the German entry alone, either.
>
> Well, the "official" pronunciation, as set out in Duden, has [a:].
Ah!  Hmm, my Duden from 1926 does not give any pronunciation.  But my
Langenscheidt dictionaries that give German pronunciation still use
[A:] vs. [a] (although they probably mean /A:/ vs. /a/).  It's not
bad, you know, as there are dialects that distinguish.

> In fact, my copy of Duden takes the trouble to contrast the [a:] of
> "Bahn" with the [A:] of English loans like "Hardware". Presumably
> this is what a guide like Gary's would be refering to.
>
> FWIW, my German teachers made a point of making us pronounce /a:/ as [a:]
> instead of [A:] (the value of Swedish /a:/).
Yes, seems logical. [a] is then probably used as the default symbol if
there's only one open vowel, as mentioned above.

**Henrik